British Airways: Foreign Exchange Exposure

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: A, The University of Liverpool, language: English, abstract: British Airways is the largest airline in United Kingdom dealing with both international destinations and flights. It is the second largest airline behind easyjet measured by passengers carried. It was founded in 1972 and privatized in 1987. The company has been involved in various alliances with companies like Oneworld Airline, American Airlines Qantas and Canadian Airlines. In 2011 it merged with Iberia creating International Airlines Group (IAG) and listing it on the stock exchange. Since then it has purchased British Midland International (BMI). The company has maintained a stream of subsidiaries in various countries including BA CityFlyer, OpenSkies and hence developed its fleet size to 262 with 169 destinations excluding code-shares and subsidiaries. Its hubs are in London Heathrow Airport and Gatwick Airport. The company has also maintained several codeshare agreements and partnership with other companies like WestJet, Loganair, Finnair and several others. The company has employees represented by a number of trade unions with each employee segment having a different trade union representing it. The company as per 2011 fiscal year indicated an increasing revenue registering 10.827 billion pounds). Exposure of foreign exchange is that sensitivity regarding a real value of domestic currency of the assets, operating incomes and liabilities to changes unanticipated that may occur in rates of exchange. The risk of foreign exchange can be determined by of value of variance of domestic currency of all liabilities, assets and operating income which is attributed rates of exchange that are unanticipated.